The current WCW champs were as follows:WCW World Champion: Hollywood Hogan (8/10/1996)
WCW U.S. Champion: Vacant (11/25/1996)
WCW World Tag Team Champions: The Outsiders (10/27/1996)
WCW World Television Champion: Lord Steven Regal (8/20/1996)
WCW World Cruiserweight Champion: Dean Malenko (10/27/1996)

HOUR NUMBER ONE! Your hosts are Tony Schiavone & Larry Zbyszko.

Stills are shown from last night at World War 3 of the Piper-Hogan contract signing.

While the Giant stole the U.S. title belt and Flair has been stripped of the champion status due to not wrestling for 30 days, a tournament to crown a new U.S. champion will begin tonight and finish at Starrcade.

Lex Luger vs. Arn Anderson – First Round WCW U.S. Title Tournament Match
Arn is essentially on his retirement tour at this point. He’s not really having any good matches and just doing what he can. By the way, Arn has his ribs taped up. Luger works on the arm until we go to commercial. Nothing to it. We come back to see Luger fighting out of a chinlock. Arn continues the violence with a catapult into the bottom rope for two. To the floor, Luger backs AA into the ringpost and it looks like there’s going to be a double countout, but it never comes. Back in, Luger stays on the back while the Giant barks down at the ring. He’s got the US belt in his hands! He really thinks he’s the US champion. Giant challenges the winner of the tournament to face him and then we’ll see who the REAL US champ is. Back to the match, they go to the floor where Luger backdrops out of a piledriver and puts AA in the TORTURE RACK! That generates the double countout and now both men are out of the tournament. (13:07 shown) Did they really think this would compete with Bret vs. Owen on Raw? *

We get some stills of Mysterio-Dragon, Jericho-Patrick, and Giant-Jarrett from World War 3.

And here comes the new World order (without Hogan) led by Eric Bischoff. Bischoff explains why he turned to the nWo. The morning after taking a Jackknife Powerbomb off a stage through a table, he asked himself whether or not he wanted to be consumed by the power, or did he want to become part of the force! Now we know it’s the latter. Not only is the highest executive in the nWo, but he’s the highest executive in WCW. The guys in the back have 30 days to convert their WCW contracts to nWo contracts or they will be targeted. As for you Mr. Piper, if you decide to get out of hand, he will fine you. As for the U.S. title, possession is 9/10ths of the law and I mean, who’s going to take that belt away from him? Wait a minute. Here comes the American Males. Riggs tries to change Bagwell’s mind, but he embraces the nWo boys anyway. When Bagwell goes over to tell Riggs that it’s just business, he drops him with a reverse neckbreaker! “nWo” chants roar throughout the arena. That’s actually as vocal as they get the whole night. Looks like Riggs got punked. And there you have it. Marcus Bagwell is the NEWEST member of the nWo.

Many call the defections over the next 30 days to be the first real mistake Bischoff had made with the nWo storyline by bringing in guys who were either long time midcarders or people who never had a big name in the business.

Diamond Dallas Page vs. Disco Inferno
Disco tries to prolong the inevitable with a swinging neckbreaker, but DDP catches him with the DIAMOND CUTTER anyways. (2:14) Gene Okerlund accuses DDP of already defecting to the nWo simply because he’s old friends with the Outsiders and he happens to live in Bischoff’s neighborhood. Other than that and it’s a poorly thought out reason, Page has really shown no other evidence of jumping ship. ½*

WCW World Television Champion Lord Steven Regal vs. Tony Pena
No he doesn’t play baseball. Pena is just a maskless Mexican wrestler who we’ve never seen before. If you check out his trunks with the roman numeral IV on it, he could be Villano IV. He tries to rough up Regal, but that just gets him angry. Regal forearms him in the corner. Pena hits a DDT for two. Butterfly suplex from Regal gets two, but the REGAL STRETCH gets the win. (3:05) Somewhat competitive. That Regal Stretch is curtains for anybody though. *½

Gene Okerlund interviews Rick Steiner. He says the Steiner Brothers are 110% behind WCW. After his trip to Japan, he sees Sting hanging up in the rafters and dropping people from behind. What’s that about? Oh Rick Steiner. You’re so much fun.

Konnan vs. Eddie Guerrero – First Round WCW U.S. Title Tournament Match
In our second first round match of the night, Eddie starts off with a lucha armdrag and a tilt-a-whirl headscissors to put Konnan on the floor for his big stage dive. Back in, Konnan drills Guerrero with the Rolling Lariat and dropkicks him in the corner. Konnan delivers a Fisherman Buster into a hammerlock roll. Powerbomb gets two. Another Fisherman Buster gets two for Konnan. Doctorbomb scores another nearfall. To mount a comeback, Guerrero dropkicks Konnan as he comes off the top. Konnan does a floatover out of the corner and rolls back, but Eddie comes at him with a clothesline. Could it be FROG SPLASH time? Nope, Konnan stops him with a superplex! Konnan goes for Splash Mountain, but Eddie tries to counter with a headscissors and winds up falling on top of Konnan instead for the 1-2-3. (5:23) And Eddie moves on to face the winner of Benoit-Regal in four weeks! **¼

More stills of World War 3 are shown. Heat-AFC, Malenko-Psychosis, and the triangle match are all included.

Rick Steiner vs. Big Bubba (w/Jimmy Hart)
Back to our moderately short matches. Rick throws Bubba around for a while until Sting comes out and SCORPION DEATHDROPS him to give Bubba the win. (3:17) Same stuff that happened to Jarrett – just channeled towards Rick Steiner now. Whatever you do people, don’t talk bad about Sting! He’ll getcha! ½*

On the Road with Lee Marshall! He’s in Dayton Ohio getting fans pumped for next week’s Nitro. How does he always know where to find a good Nitro party? They have ‘Pin the tail on the Weasel’ games and everything!

Rey Mysterio Jr. vs. Psychosis
This is usually good as long as they have plenty of time to do their thing. They roll around out of wristlocks as Ultimo Dragon and Sonny Oono show up wearing the J-Crown. Back to the match, Psychosis tries that reverse powerbomb into a hotshot spot and dumps Rey out to the floor. Whoops. Back in, Psychosis hits the GUILLOTINE LEGDROP for 1-2-NO! He goes for Splash Mountain, but Rey counters with a rana for the win. (2:20) Dragon and Oono take a step back after that finish. *

They re-air the entire Piper-Hogan contract signing from last week complete with the chair attack on the hip! That kills about fifteen minutes.

Jeff Jarrett vs. Alex Wright
Wow, we haven’t seen Alex Wright on Nitro in a couple months. He gets in a few dropkicks and headscissors takedowns on Jarrett, but jams his knee in the corner off a missed charge and submits to the FIGURE-FOUR just like that. (2:19) Jarrett used the ropes and everything! ½*

We get some more stills from World War 3. The only thing is the battle royal. I still love the Giant for that one-handed pitch on Rey Jr. It’s just awesome.

Harlem Heat (w/Sister Sherri) vs. The Faces of Fear
No Jimmy Hart? Tenay puts over the Faces of Fear for being on a win streak even though they have lost the last two matches on PPV. Stevie Ray boots Meng back, but Barbarian comes in and takes him out with the KICK OF FEAR! When Barbarian turns around, Booker takes his head off with the Jumping Leg Lariat. Side Slam/Scissors Kick combo to Meng gets two. Barbarian gets a blind tag for the backdrop into the powerbomb combo. That’s so awesome, but it only gets two. STEREO DIVING HEADBUTTS earn the Faces of Fear another two count. Eventually, the match breaks down as Barbarian and Stevie Ray head to the floor. Here comes the new World order to beat up all four men for the DQ. (4:00) We go off the air with the nWo boys standing tall – including Marcus Bagwell. Everybody is there except Hogan. *½

AND WE OUT! Anybody else notice since Raw moved to 8-9pm, the second hour has quickly became meaningless?

Starrcade goes down on December 29. Here’s the card as it looks right now.